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I am a fashion designer in love with brand identity and devoted to helping clients discover their unique brand stories. For me, no fashion brand will last without a strong brand identity, and there’s no brand identity without a story. I dare to say, the product is not important yet.
Another thing about me is that I hate tech packs. Not the tech pack itself, but symbolically. When a new fashion brand owner inquires about tech packs, it is mostly sure, they have skipped precious and crucial analysis because they thought their brand would start with the product.
Let me tell you a story: A client hired me to create tech packs for his production. Sometime later, this client called and told me he was worried about having made an overproduction of clothes (approximately 800 units). I replied,
'It's difficult to answer that because I don't know the strategy and scale of your business. Are you selling wholesale? Have you already showcased the catalogue and contacted stores? What is your marketing strategy? How much do you have budgeted for promoting your product? And what will be the final price?'
Radio silence on the other side. I just realized he hadn't thought about that. He went straight into production without a strategy.
Since that day, I stopped offering tech packs as a solo service.
And let me tell you, the tech packs I made were of excellent quality; the product came out exactly as the client dreamed, and production and sampling went smoothly and easily.
Check these reviews and what they said:
However, I felt I would make more impact on their business if I offered a more holistic approach to building a fashion brand. My tech packs, no matter how good they were, wouldn’t help them achieve what they wanted because they were convinced from the beginning they had to start with the product, and it’s the other way around. Good production samples will not make up for all the previous analysis they have skipped.
My passion is to help fashion brand owners with no experience or those coming from bad experiences, venture in the industry as creative leaders, not product owners.
The most rewarding part of my job is helping my clients unlock their brand story so they realize they have a meaningful story to tell. My most requested services are the MENTORING SESSIONS & THE BRAND IDENTITY PACKAGES, as clients want to know why their brands don't look like the ones they admire or have saved on Pinterest. Their brands lack soul and identity; they are watered down because they haven’t found that sparkling idea and story. This is because they were too focused on the product instead. When I present their new brand identities during a video call, their faces change completely, and they can’t hide their amusement. They see the brand they have always wanted, represented in emotions, colours, textures, and all the ideal client analysis, market research, opportunities, etc.
Now, my passion is to help new fashion brand owners, with no experience in fashion, venture for the first time as creative leaders, not product owners. I feel the role of a fashion designer is underestimated, and that someone with “good taste” could replace us (I heard this from lots of fashion brand owners without experience in fashion). But good taste is not enough. We don’t design nice things randomly. Our creativity works towards commercial strategy and that’s a huge difference. I can tell in my 20’ min discovery call if a fashion brand idea has potential or not, if the client has done all the previous analysis, investigation and research or if they have just jumped into the product idea right away by picking “nice stuff” they like from the internet as a reference. That’s clear at first sight.
I love working with ambitious fashion brand owners willing to become creative leaders, shift their perspective and build meaningful, memorable fashion brands. If this is you, LET’S MEET.
My POV
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Too many discovery calls start with the client highlighting that they have already paid a graphic designer for a logo and found the best manufacturer on eBay. Frankly, I don't care. Once I start asking questions about who the ideal client is, what the ethos of the brand is, and I hear responses like 'Uhmm..', 'Well, I'm not very sure...', or 'My client is a woman between 30 and 60 years old who loves fashion...', I know we have a problem. There's a false assumption that a clothing brand starts with the product idea, and sorry, I do not agree.
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I see too many new fashion entrepreneurs focusing too much on the product and its price, when actually being a brand owner and its creative director means having a much broader vision. When on a discovery call the client says they want to have a cheap product, and they just focus on price as the only variable and differential, is like saying out loud to everyone that the brand has nothing else to offer than the price, which is kind of selling their products like in a supermarket catalogue. Is that the vision you are dreaming of for your fashion project? I betcha not.
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Lots of new fashion brand owners I have worked with were so worried about launching their first-ever collection on time that they went into a stressful race to find the best manufacturer and start production ASAP (RED FLAG 🚩)
But actually, rushing the first-ever production just to fit into the fashion whirlwind when they haven’t spent time working on their brand concept, identity, and strategy is not the best decision. When they rush and focus on the timing and production, cutting off time in the planning, designing, and strategy stages that come before even thinking about the product, they end up with a full clothing production they do not know how to sell as they haven't thought about the strategy beforehand. They set up their role as a product owner instead of thinking of themselves as brand owners.
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I love the controversy around this statement, but it is true! You sell what you believe, not the product. Long-lasting, memorable brands sell believes, not products.